Reflections
by DreamingIce
Summary: For each choice made or event that happened, there are many paths left untouched. What could have five of those paths been for one Saraiyu Balitang Hetnim? Challenge 24 for the Sean circle. Old Story.


**Reflections **

**A/N:** Written for challenge 24 on the Seanfhocal circle at The Dancing Dove. Sorry to the readers of WitRF. Will be up soonish, school is dictating my time for fanfics (or lack there of) right now.

**Disclaimer:** :Sigh: would I be posting this here on if it were my own? No.

Read & (maybe) Enjoy.

I like my life as it is now, with my husband and our children. But in the past there has been so many things that I wanted to change, I would wish feverently and pray to the gods to change those things. Looking back now, I see that many of those things were really quite pathetic things to complain over; my only excuse is that I was still a child.

Even now, when years have passed, I still sit and wonder what might have happened if I had done things differently. Would have I changed things significantly? Would I have been happy? Or miserable? Would I even be alive at all?

For example, my mother died when I was nine, my little sister was only five. Young as we both were, Dove and I knew that something wasn't right that day; we sensed foreboding in the air. We kept it to ourselves, if we had said something, maybe, just maybe, Mama would have stayed to soothe us. She mightn't have gone riding, or taken that jump. On the other hand she might not of, and if she had, what would it have been like? Papa never would withdrawn into himself so completely for all that time, he never would have married Winna. For many years, I thought that would have been a good thing, I thought that Winna was trying to replace Mama. But now I can see that she never tried to at all, and if she hadn't married Papa, I wouldn't have Petra as a sister, or Elsren as a brother, even though Elsren's time with us was painfully short.

If I hadn't been such a flirt in my teenage years, oh, the list of things that could have changed for this is endless. I wouldn't have had poor Papa and Winna pulling their hair out over my flightiness for one thing, and most likely, Rubinyan and Imajane wouldn't have seen her as so much of threat, which could have revoked that idiotic marriage proposal between myself and Dunevon.

I guess that sort of leads on to this one: what if I hadn't led Bronau on? This one haunts me even to this day. If he hadn't gotten any reaction from me would he of come back after his attempt to kidnap Dunevon? Probably not. And if he hadn't come back… Papa wouldn't have died. Papa deserved better than to be betrayed like that. If I hadn't flirted with Bronau, maybe Papa wouldn't of have been killed in front of me.

What if I had actually _agreed_ to the marriage between Dunevon and I? Imajane and Rubinyan must have been planning that storm for Dunevon's birthday by that time, would have they given me the same fate? It would have been a simple way to. Then they would have got rid of not only the last two males of Rivetton blood, but of the eldest of the half-raka girls who were causing such restlessness from the commoners.

And if I hadn't left with Zaimid, what would have happened? I'm sure that I would have got the assassination attempts that my sister did. Would I have been made Queen? If I had, I doubt that I could have done it. I would have gone crazy, I'm just not made out for making the kind of decisions that Dove makes everyday. I have no idea how she can do it, myself. I _never_ wanted to be a ruler, of anything. Never ever.

Things could have been so different. Wether in a good or bad way… it's hard to say. I just realised something, most of this pondering of mine has been questions or included the word 'maybe', I guess it's because the future can be such a slippery thing. Aly told me a while back that _her_ mother had once said that there are times where not even the gods can see into the future. For the future, and what happens in it, depends on what us mortals do.

So now when I look in the mirror I see Saraiyu Hetnim, the daughter of Duke Mequen and Duchess Saragunai, a sister to Queen Dovasary, the wife of Zaimid Hetnim, a mother of three gorgeous children, and a woman who can now see that, while there has been down points, she would change none of it for the world.

_Fin_

**A/N: **Reviews are loved and cherished beyond measure. (This includes CC and flames, flames make me laugh)

Aussie Daydream Queen Misha.


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